Reagan opened his official presidential campaign in Mississippi with a speech castigating the federal government for destroying Jim Crow and undermining Southern autonomy (which wanted laws and institutions that forced blacks to the back of the bus). I don't think Reagan was a racist any more than Pence is a homophobe. Both men were feeding the unfortunate coalitions the GOP built to break the New Deal and transfer government resources from the middle class to the corporate elite.
To create a wide coalition of voters, the GOP targeted the poor with religion and patriotism, with a heavy emphasis on Dog Whistle racism to get southern Dixiecrats to vote Republican.
In fact, it was the Southern Strategy, initiated by Goldwater, Wallace & Nixon, which finally, in 1980, flipped the Solid South and created the Reagan movement, which movement started with a promise of fiscal responsibility and small government, but - ironically - climaxed under Bush's 2008 Meltdown and his Surveillance State (illegal wiretapping, Patriot Act, etc.).
(Side note: The GOP's post-Watergate ascendancy targeted well-meaning but under-educated patriots who don't even know what the Southern Strategy was. Nor do they know the political and cultural differences between Hussein and Bin Laden, or how the CIAs removal of Mossedeq in Iran merely strengthened Islamic radicalism. In short, the GOP - desperate to break the 45 year ascent of the New Deal - harvested a voting coalition that was uniquely uneducated, and easily seduced by a very transparent culture war, which used values, race and fear to pry unwitting democrat voters away from what had become a bloated and ineffectual Democratic Machine, one that traded traditional working class issues for gender, race and lifestyle politics. The minute the Left aligned itself with bra burners, anti war hippies and black panthers, the Right had the opening to unite a massive and diverse coalition of voters, from northern Catholic workers to white suburbanites and Southern gun owners. The history of how voting coalitions have shifted and evolved is very interesting indeed.)
To create a wide coalition of voters, the GOP targeted the poor with religion and patriotism, with a heavy emphasis on Dog Whistle racism to get southern Dixiecrats to vote Republican.
In fact, it was the Southern Strategy, initiated by Goldwater, Wallace & Nixon, which finally, in 1980, flipped the Solid South and created the Reagan movement, which movement started with a promise of fiscal responsibility and small government, but - ironically - climaxed under Bush's 2008 Meltdown and his Surveillance State (illegal wiretapping, Patriot Act, etc.).
(Side note: The GOP's post-Watergate ascendancy targeted well-meaning but under-educated patriots who don't even know what the Southern Strategy was. Nor do they know the political and cultural differences between Hussein and Bin Laden, or how the CIAs removal of Mossedeq in Iran merely strengthened Islamic radicalism. In short, the GOP - desperate to break the 45 year ascent of the New Deal - harvested a voting coalition that was uniquely uneducated, and easily seduced by a very transparent culture war, which used values, race and fear to pry unwitting democrat voters away from what had become a bloated and ineffectual Democratic Machine, one that traded traditional working class issues for gender, race and lifestyle politics. The minute the Left aligned itself with bra burners, anti war hippies and black panthers, the Right had the opening to unite a massive and diverse coalition of voters, from northern Catholic workers to white suburbanites and Southern gun owners. The history of how voting coalitions have shifted and evolved is very interesting indeed.)
